Sweet Home Indeed

Getting on the plane and flying fifteen hours across continents, oceans, and time zones is a mind-boggling experience – every single time. And I have done it many times. It takes my soul several days to catch up with me. This is my late grandma talking and she was referring to a road trip from Cologne in the center of Germany back to her home up in Northern Germany. But she was right.
Going home is more than a geographic transplantation – it’s a time travel back to our beginnings: The sounds, smells, sights, and tastes of our past and, with that, the feelings that are indelibly connected to them.

Getting off the plane in Frankfurt, I am enveloped by a dull silence like that at an on-campus library on a late winter afternoon. The air smells of cigarette smoke from one of the ubiquitous so-called “smokers’ corner” across the terminal and conjures up images of fat arm-chairs and a queasy feeling of not belonging.
The doors to the bathroom are heavy and it takes the thrust of my entire half-dead body to pry it 1/3 open, just enough to squeeze through before it slams shut again – just short of my shoulder. Everything is big and heavy and I – at 1,82m – am small, once again. I can’t help but smile. I am back.

But then again there is a lot to be said about what’s good about that Alice-like state. Because while I am small I am determined to clamp my teeth down on every bit of cake, pastry, and bread that I can find. No regrets. The big plus: I can have coffee and beer with it now. And I do. Three weeks of complete debauchery leaves me no bigger but a little rounder.
I had a wonderful time and my nephew is about the cutest little creature you can imagine. However I, being the overly excited aunt, I managed to have a stuffed monkey fall into his basinet and wake him up from his serene slumber. The parents were more than forgiving and so was he, thank God. Poo on me.

Now that I am back – I can’t say home really, not yet – I feel out of sorts. I am not good at this time travel business. My soul is still caught at customs without any chance of getting out of there any time soon, it seems.
It’s June and it’s raining in paradise. At least that’s a well-known sound, smell, and sight to behold. It always rained when I was a kid. And I admit, I am grateful.